I Got Dressed Up to Talk About the Collapse of American Education

I got dressed up for a conversation with Teresa Manning to discuss the many crises currently swallowing American education.

We start with President Trump’s higher-education compact—its promises, its limitations, and its enforcement power, which hovers somewhere between “symbolic” and “nonexistent.”

From there, Manning and I move into the growing national-security risks tied to foreign student influence, addressing Trump’s claim that Americans are somehow talentless and that we therefore need 600,000 Chinese students to sustain institutions that will do him no favors.

We also dive into the cultural pressures reshaping student life: the dating recession, the loneliness epidemic, and the increasingly unforgiving job market waiting to greet graduates.

Next, we tackle “social and emotional learning,” which has drifted far from its feel-good origins and is now functioning as a political delivery system in the K–12 world—crowding out academics and sidelining parents.

All of this stacks onto a broader moral and cultural unraveling: collapsing traditional values, triumphant divisive ideologies, and a shared civic foundation that’s looking more rickety by the day.

There’s plenty more, but we end by pointing toward the only workable solution: rebuild the foundation. Restore moral purpose to education. Resist ideological capture. Reorient schools toward forming actual adults, not permanently offended activists.

The full conversation is worth your time. Watch below or on YouTube: